041. This Job Is Supposed to be Fun - Fire Athlete [Part 2]

In Part 2 of our series with Joff Fierro from Fire Athlete, we explore firefighter training, culture, and the commitment to excellence within the fire service.

🔥 Joff and TJ describe the trials and triumphs of the firefighter testing process and the arduous path to earning a coveted spot on the fire department roster. Joff sheds light on the grueling and often lengthy testing process that aspiring firefighters must endure to be hired onto the fire department. From physical agility tests to written examinations, Joff offers invaluable insights into the rigorous journey to becoming a firefighter.

🚒 Dive into the heart of firefighter culture as TJ and Joff explore strategies for training rookies and instilling the core values and traditions of the fire service in the next generation of firefighters. Discover the importance of mentorship, camaraderie, and leading by example in shaping the future of the fire department.

👨‍🚒 Join the conversation as TJ and Joff lament the detrimental impact of officers who choose to belittle their people instead of uplifting and empowering them. Explore the profound implications of toxic leadership and the imperative of fostering a culture of respect, support, and growth within the fire service.

🔥 Plus, gain exclusive insights into the future of Fire Athlete as Joff shares his vision for empowering firefighters to reach new heights of physical fitness, mental resilience, and professional excellence.

As a patron of Keep the Promise, you're not just supporting a podcast—you’re joining a community of like-minded, aggressive firefighters who want to be the best at their craft. You’ll gain access to daily workouts, weekly mindset meditations, and early access to the insights you need to stay on top of your game. Support Keep the Promise and take your place among firefighters who know that our st

Support the show

>>> Shop Keep the Promise! <<<

Get 15% off your purchase at Rescue 1 CBD with code KTP at checkout!

Learn how to make your own custom fire helmet shields with the Helmet Shield Workbook

Listen to the end for a special shout out to our Patrons!

Get the FREE guide to minimalist firehouse workouts.

Links and resources:

• Join the Keep the Promise community
• Follow us on Instagram
• Check out our sponsor TJ Leather

Transcript

Joff: I tested for five long, grueling, sad, angry, happy years, right?

And it, it was every bit of learning at every step of the day. And there was times where I was like, dude, I am fucking done with this. And then I'll talk to a guy or a girl who was like, I tested once I interviewed once and I got on. And they're like, you'll probably hate me for saying that.

I'm like why would I hate you for saying that you had it? You understood it. The fact that you can just walk into a career like the fire service and be like, first try motherfuckers. That's impressive to me. Good for you.

You did something right. But it's also impressive for the person who perseveres and tries and tries and gets told no eight different times from multiple different departments and is nah, I'm going to fucking be a firefighter someday. Watch.

Joff: Sometimes more often than not, but, um, we're good with our probationary firefighters, uh, the ones that care. And there are a lot of them that care. And you know, there's, there's like, it's every department, right? There's, there's always the guy that doesn't want to train. That doesn't want to work out that doesn't want to train the new guy.

But everywhere that I have been roving around on the shifts that I rove around on. they, they care and it's great. It's like, Hey, what are we doing today is most of the time. Like the first question that's asked on the truck, it's like, well, we're going to check off our truck. We're going to make sure everything's working.

We're going to clean the bathrooms. We're going to clean the bay. We're going to do a once over on the, on the station. And then let's go train. Let's go shop for food and then let's work out after that. And then let's cook. Let's build camaraderie. Let's watch a movie. If time allows, because we're running so many freaking calls and so on and so forth and a structured, well planned day is, you know, key, you know, because you have your, you have your routine and a lot of younger firefighters that I've seen come on the job as of recent because of the shortage that we have in firefighters didn't do ride alongs.

They were just like, I want to be a firefighter, so I'm going to go take the test, learn how to interview the way that they want me to and get hired. And I've noticed like, as a few other people have that I've talked to that there is a decent significant amount, I'm sorry, a decent amount of newer firefighters that don't understand the culture yet.

So they're getting, they're, they're getting criticized. For not being the stereotypical booter probationary firefighter when they didn't know in the first place that this is what you're supposed to be doing. Um, there's, there's that whole mantra of booters are seen, not heard sort of deal. And I hate that.

Like, I get it. There's a time and a place for probationary firefighters to talk and, you know, share their feelings about things or ask questions. But, like, to just think that this person just is here to clean and train and cook for me and clean for me is just such an asinine thought process. Like, that's a human.

That's somebody that, like you said, you want to pull you through a floorboard if for some reason something goes wrong, and they're like, you know what? I really don't like this guy. And that's never gonna happen. But, like, If I had a backseat guy that treated me like crap, dude, that it would be, it would make life, it would make this job so much more less appealing.

You know what I mean? Like, why would you want to come to, to work where people just pick on you all day?

TJ: Right. To deal with petulant man children.

Joff: Yeah, like that's not fun. It's supposed to, this job is supposed to be fun. This is the best job in the world. Like we like to say, right? Everyone says it, but it's like, if you dig a little bit deeper, you go, Oh yeah, there's, there's some issues there. There's some issues.

TJ: Here's a couple of issues.

Joff: Well,

TJ: Let's rewind a bit. And. I love the fact that we're going completely off the rails from the questions that we talked about because that means I get to have you along for a second chat, hopefully. But you 

were talking about the culture. Dude, no, no, no, this is, that's, I told you, it's a structure and we, we just, we ball. So you're talking about the, the fact that some of these newer booters are not showing up having done ride alongs. I. We don't do ride alongs. I was lucky enough that I volunteered when when I turned 18. So I kind of had an idea I was cocky enough and annoying enough. But I kind of had a clue about the culture about the expectations about it.

And everyone listening will understand what it is. You can look at a firefighter and say, Ooh, they've got it like they they get the idea of the fire service. We're getting those folks who come straight from high school or college, haven't done any of this stuff before, and they get hired. And there's no blueprint on how to pass on that culture, that, that it, if that makes sense, because.

A lot of times they are doing what they're supposed to. They're showing up at 6 59 for their 7 a. m. shift and they are doing their chores, but you know, 2100 hits and they're in bed and by the letter of the law, they're not doing anything wrong, but culturally speaking, they're kind of not living up to the expectations.

How do we instill it? In those newer folks without taking the old school mindset of like, fuck you shit bag, like, you just don't get it. You don't belong here. Get out of here. What is something that we can do in 2024 dealing with the folks we're dealing with? To instill those those almost ephemeral values that most of us get, but that some people may not understand yet.

Joff: dude. Baseline. Teach them, teach them, show them social media is such a huge, like, like powerful platform. And. Like, to go back to the, the probationary firefighter that didn't do ride alongs, they, one, I don't know how you get hired without doing ride alongs because that was my, my whole deal, you know, trying to get hired.

So like, that to me is like, that's foreign. I'm like, I don't, I don't get how you decided you wanted to do this job without at least like testing the waters before you did that. And maybe you've seen lots of pictures and videos and like thought this was the coolest thing in the world. That's fine. But if your probationary firefighter is not doing the things that you think they should be doing, tell them.

The end. And if they don't listen, then it's their fault. But you, you don't know what you don't know, right? So if like everybody else goes to bed at 10 o'clock and the booter's like, all right, well, everybody's in sleep. Like the bay door shut, things are clean. I'm going to go to sleep too. I, I, I've never really understood the booter staying awake.

The last person, like the last person to be awake, because like one, they're the hardest worker on the truck. They need the most sleep. They should be eating first. And I get like, that's a huge culture thing. Like. That's just like mind games. And yeah, I dealt with that too. It's just part of the like the learning process and like the screwing with the new guy process to see if we can If we can get them to break start a deal to an extent right and not nothing In my probationary year was ever malicious.

It was all like every once in a while somebody pulled me aside be like, hey, man, like You talk too much. Oh, my bad dude. Like, I'll quiet it down at the, at the fire table or the dinner table. I'm just really excited. I got a lot of questions. They're like, it's all good. There's a time and a place I had really, really good mentors.

I had great backseat firefighters and I want all of that for these people coming on, you know what I mean? So with that, there's this new, it's not even new. We have this great, awesome. Supercomputer in our, in our pocket at all times, right? I can literally just ask. I'm going to say Alexa because my Siri will go off if I say Siri, but I can ask that thing.

Anything that I want like, Hey, how do I get hired with the fire department? Google search for me about how to get hired. And everybody's on social media. It doesn't matter if it's TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, whatever. If that information's on there, that's a new way of, that's a new way of injecting info into our younger people to get that information quicker.

Does that make sense? Like,

TJ: it does, it does. Meet your people where they are and meet your future people where they are. When it comes to the marketing, I get so upset at my department because they're still doing the hiring fairs and like sending people to like schools and shit like that. 

And the social media presence is boomerish at best.

That's it. Hey, here is a crappy graphic on checking your smoke detectors. I'm like, the amount, like, the amount of campaigns that could be run teaching the community about what we do, about life safety, about events coming up. Like, the ways that you can make it personable and reach those folks are amazing.

infinite, yet we are choosing to have something that it looks like, I don't know, a baby on crack drew on micro Microsoft paint and just posted. And it's like, change your smoke detectors, change the batteries. Like that's it. Or like, my favorite is always at the end of whatever month whatever's being celebrated that month.

Like, oh, on this last day of fire safety week, I'm like, guys, you had an entire year to prepare for this. We I think we missed the mark on on that because it worked in the past. And it worked for getting people on board and it the way bring it back to teaching our our newer folks. Hey, it worked for me.

They taught me this way. Therefore, it's going to work for the future generations. I think we're missing the point. We are missing the fact that these generations are different. They grew up with these phones. They grew up with the world's wealth of knowledge at their fingertips. And, I mean, we see it at the table all the time.

People sit down to eat, all the phones come out. I remember when I first started the conversations, and the being picked on, you just kind of waited. Like, it kind of went around the table, or if it was your unlucky day, you were going to be the butt of all the jokes. Now it's just quiet. So quiet. And I've talked to a couple of young guys, like, hey, like, just Like, be in, be involved.

Well, I got nothing to offer to the conversation, so I'm just gonna bury myself in my phone. It's like, I get it. But I guess we're gonna have to start doing, like, I don't know, dinners via Zoom. Where we all sit together and we all Zoom each other on their phones. I don't fucking know, we gotta change something.

Joff: Yeah, yeah, I've noticed that, unfortunately. It's a comfort thing, dude. It's like, you don't have to sit there in silence, you know what I mean? So like, I'm going to pull out my phone and like, interact with this device that I'm looking at so I don't feel the outside pressure of not talking because it's awkward and I don't know how to deal with that.

And I guarantee you that's what every other person at that table is thinking. And there's a lot of posts from like other fire department pages, fire, firefighter pages, um, of like put the phones away during dinner. And let me tell you, that's never going to happen. That that era is gone. And I, I don't disagree with you because I think like if your station was like, Hey guys, here's the phone basket.

Everybody put your phone in the basket during dinner. Like if you guys, if somebody did that, I'd be like, fuck yeah. Like phone in the basket, like keys in the keys, like in the bowl. If you're going to a drinking party, you

TJ: Oh, I 

was gonna say what kind of party you talk about, bro, because where I come from putting the keys and like, yeah, now we're now we're talking some wild shit.

Joff: yeah. Like just, you're not driving home. We're all, we're all sitting here. We're talking, we're having dinner together, we're building camaraderie, we're telling war stories. We're being, we're being people. So if like, I thought about that, but like, one, none of these stations are my stations, right? So like for me to like be like, hey guys, like, let's do the phone bowl.

TJ: Like 

shut up, Rover, get the fuck 

Joff: fuck off. Go back to A shift. Um, Yeah. I'm sure maybe somebody would say that, who knows. Or, shit, maybe some, somebody out of the blue states something that no one else has thought of before and they're like, you know what, that's a good idea. Like, let's, everybody put your phones away and we'll either sit here in silence awkwardly and painfully or we will be forced to talk and we will find, firefighters will always find something to talk about at the dinner table.

Like, If your dinner table is quiet, it's because you don't like each other or you've literally told every war story you've ever told. Like, it's just, it's just how the, the, the fire table works. It's just how it is. You know what I mean? But social media, like, we're so stuck to these things, dude. Like, And it's good and bad, but it's just kind of how you see it.

TJ: I find myself in that similar mindset because you with a couple of your projects have found that social media is an incredible tool to leverage. Everything to leverage your knowledge to leverage skill, effort, everything that, that you can do by yourself. Once you add that to the mix and content creation, it magnifies a thousand fold. And I think we both see the dark side. That is, we are just glued to it. We, I stopped posting on keep the promise for a couple of weeks. And I had a couple of folks from literally like down the street be like, Hey, bro, you alive? Like you haven't posted on KTP. I'm like, why didn't you just text me? Yes, I'm alive.

I'm doing well. I just got off of Instagram for a while because I got tired of being in the right race of daily posting and all that stuff. Going back to the kitchen table conversations. The one thing, the anecdotal evidence that I have that I've seen works pretty well is if you're lucky enough to have folks from the same Academy class or similar, once you start telling your war stories from the Academy, even the rookies, Are comfortable telling what they went through and, and kind of sharing, you know, the adventures and misadventures, right?

Like mine, I remember they had these cameras on like on the big classroom where we're all sad that we're supposed to be for like teleconference classes and everything, but you could tell that the instructors would. fire them up and they would do like a quick initializing sequence they would spin so you knew they were watching you and within five minutes the door would get kicked open.

We'd be doing push ups and whatnot. Fast forward a couple of years and the guys are, you know, they're telling you stories about how during lunch they would make paninis and that they would have like a guy pouring out espresso shots for everybody. I'm like, how times have changed.

Joff: That's wild.

TJ: the conversation right now, now that, But now that guy with less time is telling stories of what went down in their academy, and now we can start talking about the differences, some of the things that are still taking place, but the conversation is happening.

The phones are getting put down. I mean, maybe the phones are getting picked up for them to show us pictures. Mind blowing to me. I'm like, you guys had phones in the academy? Like, holy shit, they would murder us if we had a phone during our academy. But I think that's something that's that shared, that's a common experience that everybody can speak to and that they can. They don't feel like they haven't earned their place because they completed it. They've been through it. They've earned their spot. You don't have to go to like, you know, 15 alarm fire and talk about your war stories. Hey, you made it through the Academy. Tell us about it. And, and it helps all of us. Like it helps the 26 year captain who has taught 15 academies understand some of the changes.

It helps some of us who have less time in see the crew that we're dealing with. And it makes the rookie feel good that they are contributing something to the conversation.

Joff: absolutely. Everybody has something to say.

You just got to get it out of him sometimes.

TJ: and everybody has something to contribute. Sometimes we think, like you said, that, hey, be seen and not heard. That was one of my biggest disappointments when I came out of the Academy, because I went straight to the Special Operations Firehouse, thinking it was going to be modeled remotely, like any sort of military special forces, where everybody is an asset, and everybody, everybody's skills are put to the test.

Thanks. I'm a computer nerd. I've been around this shit my entire life. I can, you know, plug myself into the matrix and be good with it. So when it came to, for example, missing person searches and running all the topographic software and all that shit, I'm your man. Like, put me in front of that computer, I'm gonna have all the different probability circles, all the area searched, like, everything's gonna be done. And there was this one officer who, I mean, I will never forget this because it was creative. Dickish, but creative. That I asked him if I should run the computer on one of the training exercises. And this motherfucker went out and he printed the list of everybody in the department by seniority. Twelve or so pages. And he found my name on page like ten. And he said, you can run the computer when you're on page three.

Joff: Oh my gosh, dude.

TJ: I mean, again, 10 out of 10 creativity, like got the point across, but also like 100 out of 10 fucking asshole move. I'm like, okay, like you 

fucking like hillbillies with no computer experience run it.

I'm going to be trekking through the woods, tripping over shit, playing flashlight tag. Have fun. Enjoy it. Um, But yeah, going back to what we said that everybody has something to offer, everybody has something that they can bring to the team and the sooner that we realize, well the sooner that we remember that this is a team thing and we live and die as teams, the more we're going to be able to leverage the skills of our teammates in, in a good way, in a way that that's going to, you know, help us, help the community, help the department, and make sure that we go home happy and healthy at the end of the shift.

Joff: dude. When the day that you stop being able to contribute something positive to the to the fire department is the day that you should retire.

TJ: It's a good thing I always bring my amazing sense of humor and sharp wit every single day.

Joff: Beautiful. That's great. Because without that, this job would be really fucking boring.

TJ: My captain is so fed up with me. I've like we used to work together when, when we were firefighters and now we get to drive him. And I think my station has a couple more senior folks. So the house captain. So my shift and then the EMS officer who's usually a captain with 20 plus years and the safety officer, same thing.

So, tenured guys. Like, guys who have been around for a while. And one time, everybody was eating lunch in the kitchen, and of course, I come in as ceremoniously as I can. I slam the kitchen door open, and I forget what, like, I was just like, in my head, like, extra, extra mayhem. Without even thinking who the fuck was in there, I'm like, shut the fuck up, threes.

A ten is about to speak. And my captain just like everybody on the shift just kind of look at me like seriously and my captain literally dropped his fork and he goes, Why do you insist on speaking? Like, yeah, success. I just brought a little more entropy to your guys's lives. Enjoy. But I think that's, that's what makes the culture what it is that we can we can fuck around like that.

And The new guy, the old guy, they can bring that chaos and that excitement and always bring something to the table, which goes back to the inclusivity that we've always talked about when it comes to fire athlete.

Joff: Yes.

TJ: But we have a lot of like technical things that we can get into, but I feel that instead of belaboring the point, we should do this at another time.

But tell me, looking ahead, some of your goals for For fire athlete and personally for your career.

Joff: Um, shoot. Personally, I'll just get that out of the way quickly. Um, my, my rescue partner, uh, I think helped me. So I just took the engineer's test. Um, I'm on the list. Uh, I didn't score as high as I would have liked to, but, um, I will, I will probably be made here hopefully by the end of the year. Um, I'm very excited for that, uh, because I do enjoy driving and everything pumping and operating a truck.

I drove an ambulance for four and a half years and I was very safe about that. I even talked about it in my fire interview because like it was a big deal for me because that was a huge accountability issue, right? Like that massive piece of equipment, um, is something that I'm responsible for. So I was like, that's, that's something that I want to do.

I know that I'm good at and I'm going to learn the pumping sequences. I'm going to learn the math, which I'm terrible at. To make sure that I can get water to these guys that need to put the wet stuff on the hot stuff, right? So that was me. Um, I wasn't going to take that for a while. Uh, but my, my rescue partner was like, dude, you'd be a good engineer.

And I appreciate him wholeheartedly for that. Shout out to Freddie Bautista. I love you very much. You're my, my homie for life. Um, then for fire athlete. Uh, dude, we're, we're honestly. I kind of, I talked to Adrian at the beginning of this year. I was like, we need to, we need to blow up this year. And now that I say that, it's not going to happen.

Right. But

TJ: manifesting. Come on, man. We just had an eclipse. Manifest.

Joff: um,

TJ: Tesla, Tesla, Tesla.

Joff: uh, I, we're trying to interject, interject ourselves, um, inject ourselves into areas where we, typically wouldn't find firefighter based workout programs. Um, so we're trying to find companies that would like to partner with us that would, that need one coaches programs, um, fitness routines, motivation, anything of that sort.

So we're kind of, we're, we're trying to basically double ourselves this year in the easiest way to put that.

Yeah, we, we just, we want to keep adding programs that pertain to different demographics of people. We want to help more people get hired. Um, we want to keep building our mentorship that I'm really excited about. Um, I do like to, I do want to clarify something. Uh, we have been called a, an affiliate group, an affinity group, my apologies, multiple times.

Okay. We are not an affinity group because we have to, if I, if I, if I'm correct here, we have to, um, stick with one department. So like if we were going to be an affinity group for Phoenix, we would be like the fire athlete affinity group. Um, but because we're so widespread and we have the social media presence that we do, uh, the idea for our mentorship was we want to take firefighters from all the cities in Arizona.

And bring them into one place at one time. And if Mesa fire department is hiring, we have a firefighter from Mesa here to help you with their interview process and their level of fitness that there's required for their academy. If Prescott's doing that, we, I, I know a guy in Prescott, I can point you in that direction for that.

Um, but like, Hey, if you want to talk Phoenix, like I'm here for the interviews, I'm here for their level of fitness, so on and so forth. Right. Thank you. I didn't want to pigeonhole ourselves and I'm not saying that the other affinity groups are doing that because they help tons of people get hired on a yearly basis.

Um, but we didn't want to stick with one city. We wanted to be the fire athlete mentorship. So people come to us and they do workouts and it's very, very beginner based level. Um, and that's something that I would really like to grow this year, which to get more people, you know, Two of the girls that are in our, in our mentorship work their asses off and got hired.

Um, I'm not going to say names or departments just because I don't know how that works yet. Um, but they, they just got their calls, super excited for them. And, uh, we're helping this, this is something I'm proud of. And I know a lot of people, and I have to explain this, A lot of people scoff at the idea that people aren't able to pass the CPAT.

Are you familiar with the CPAT?

TJ: Oh yeah, I had to take that one. Almost died the first time I did it. It was awesome.

Joff: Yeah. If you have no idea about firefighter fitness or like that style of fitness in general, like that's gonna be hard for you. And when Adria and I sat down with these programs that we wanted to, we wanted to build new programs, I was like, how many good candidates are we losing specifically because they don't know the workout style that it takes to pass a CPAT.

Like I, I was there. I used to be that person and I learned quickly and I passed, but I had to take the CPAT like, I think like six or seven times before I got hired because it expires like every six months or something like that, which is

TJ: Genius financial move for them.

Joff: Yeah, those, those guys. Um, But yeah, dude, just keep helping people.

Keep helping people learn and grow and build camaraderie and just build fire athlete. Like, keep, like our new slogan, new, new ish slogan has, has been proudly promoting fitness in the fire service. Whatever kind of fitness that is, fuck yeah, dude. Fuck yeah. I am proud of you. I'm stoked that you are, you're a firefighter and you want to play tennis.

I'm stoked. We'll give you a shirt so you can show everybody that you're a fire athlete. Like whatever it is, we're proud of you and we'll come root you on because promoting that in this industry is huge. Yeah.

TJ: that. I love that. It's um, it's such a refreshing take on a topic that we just sometimes don't pay attention to and Sometimes that we do pay attention to the topic of firefighter fitness like we talked about before It can be very polarizing like you're not carrying the boats. You're not carrying the logs.

Fuck you No, because we need everybody we need all these folks like I like what you mentioned about the people that were losing through the c pad because that that Filter might be taking out a lot of amazing candidates And uh what you guys are doing You In the long term, I think is going to bring some massive cultural change to the fire service, which I love seeing.

Joff: I do want to clarify. I, and I do agree. The CPAT is the most basic base level level of fitness that you can be for the fire service. which I think everybody can agree on. And if you're struggling with that, there's a reason, but we need to find that reason and we need to fix it so that you can pass that.

And then we're going to get you to the level of fitness for fire firefighting that you need to be at. Like, it's not, I don't know, man. There's, there's just like, there's a lot of like, even athletes out there that are like, Oh, I'm not used to this level of cardiovascular endurance. Like this is foreign to me.

Let's do this. Let's do these things. Let's work on these certain types of workouts and that should help. And then they pass. And we've helped a few people pass their CPAT and now they're doing our bigger workouts and seeing that is like, okay, this works. Like these, these are good candidates. Can they get through a fire academy right now?

Hell no. Like. I would not wish that upon anybody, but we're going to get them there. We're absolutely going to get them there if they want that because you have to also want it. So I know it's, I've had this conversation with so many people that are like, they can't pass the CPAT. Like, hold on. There's, there's a couple of different, like, there's a couple of different things to this, like that we need to talk about.

I've had some conversations with some hardheaded people that are like, no, dude, if we can't. If they can't pass the CFAT, they don't belong here. I'm like, well, if they don't pass the CFAT, they're not going to be here. So you don't have to worry about it.

TJ: Plus, what does that tell about their, their drive? Maybe they can't pass it now, but they're going to work through it. And they're going to be able to pass it. That tells me that person, like you said, wants it. That person is willing to endure and to suffer through new things to accomplish the goal. That's a person I want.

I don't want the, you know. The first try Fridays. I want that guy or gal who has been ground down and just kept on going and going because I know they're the ones that are going to pull me out of that basement.

Joff: Oh, yeah. I, That's kind of that inclusivity thing that I want to loop back to is because like, even the First Try Fridays, man, like, they're good people too. Like, they are, they had it. That was something that I wish I could have had. And it's like, it's funny when I will talk to a newer guy, I tested for five long, grueling, sad, angry, happy years, right?

And it, it was every bit of learning at every step of the day. And there was times where I was like, dude, I am fucking done with this. Like, and then I'll talk to a guy or a girl who was like, Oh, I got on. I tested once I interviewed once and I got on. And they're like, you'll probably hate me for saying that.

I'm like, why, why would I hate you for saying that you had it? You understood it. If I could have had that, I probably wouldn't be the same person I am today. But like the fact that you can just walk into a career like the fire service and be like, first try motherfuckers. That's impressive to me. Like good for you.

You did something right. And I just think it's impressive. I don't know. But it's also impressive for the person who perseveres and tries and tries and tries and gets told no eight different times from multiple different departments and is like, nah, I'm going to fucking be a firefighter someday. Watch.

Watch. Like, I love, I love those stories. I love the first Try Friday stories. I just, I love all of it.

TJ: You are eight up with the fire department. I love it. I love it. What is the one failure that you cherish the most?

Joff: That's a good question, dude. I, the, I mean, if I had to say it would be the five years of being told, no, you know what I mean? Like, like if I was going to go work for Google, like, and I applied once, you know, Like, I'm so, so foreign to, like, the, the office setting and, like, the corporate world. But, like, if I was going to go apply for a job, and I was like, here's all my credentials, I have what you guys want, and they were like, yeah, sorry, we have other candidates.

I'd be like, oh yeah, okay, time to go look for another job. But because we're able to Go on ride alongs and see the fire department out firsthand. Like I don't think I would ever be able to go to an office complex and be like, so what do you guys do? Like how does day to day life work here? You know, like they would be like, get, get out.

How did you get past security? It's like I would, we, we get to have people come see what it's like firsthand. We have classes, we have workout programs, like the firefighter one and two is a great example. For people who have no idea what the fire service is about. Like go learn and then do ride alongs.

Please, please do ride alongs. Like it's, it's so imperative. Um, I forgot where I was going with that.

TJ: The failure, the five years.

Joff: Yes. Sorry, dude. I go off on such terrible tangents. My apologies.

TJ: it makes you an awesome podcast guest.

Joff: Uh, yeah, I just, there's, there's just like, There's so many cool things about this job that like, if you, you don't know what you don't know, right? So like we have to, we have to teach people, we have to help them learn. Um,

TJ: and Joff himself?

Joff: don't follow my personal page. Um, yeah, I know. You get to see all the, uh, very widespread humor things that I think is

TJ: Dude, I'm here for that shitposting. Makes my day.

Joff: I'm glad. Cause it is like, My, um, I think, I honestly think I'm partial. I'm, I'm partially the reason or like 90 percent of the reason why my wife got off of Instagram.

TJ: She had 

Joff: Cause she's like, dude, you just, I can't, I can't with you. I'm like, really? Like me. She's like, yeah, you're, you're memes. They're so annoying. I'm like, no, like my friends think they're funny. You just don't have good sense of humor. She's like, no, you're just weird. All right.

TJ: One of us. One of us.

Joff: Um, we have an Instagram page that you can scroll on for probably an hour and see tons of content and reasons why you should follow us and hang out with us and come to our mentorship. We have a TikTok where we post our funnier videos. Um, we have a website that describes basically everything that we're about.

Um, yeah, it's just, it's me. And. Coach Adrian and a couple of other, a couple other of our, uh, mentors, uh, specifically Matt and Grayson and Mike and Sierra, everybody that's trying to help us out and then build a better, stronger fire service.

TJ: I love it, buddy. Ladies and gentlemen, Joff Fierro. Thank you. Buddy, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. And

Joff: you. Thanks for having me on. This has been awesome. What's up everybody. I hope you enjoyed both of these episodes with Joffe. If you don't get fired up after listening to him, then there's something legitimately wrong with you because the dude brings such a refreshing. Outlook to the fire service in. It's so genuine about how he cares for the people. Both on the job and getting ready to get on the job. 

TJ: It's just. It's so awesome. Finding somebody like that. And the day and age where we can eat our young pretty well and where we can be pretty elitist about who we let in and who we don't let in. So I really had a great time talking to him. I'm definitely going to have him on board for other stuff. And you can bet that we are going to collaborate again in the future because. The homie is solid. And we also sent a lot of shit posts and memes back and forth. 

So that's like the mark of amazing friendship in the 21st century. For those of you who may be new, who may not know. And just as a reminder to those loyal listeners at the end of every episode, every like actual guest. Do a shout out for those new patrons who have joined our online community and what is the only community. It is basically a space to become that resilient well-rounded firefighter. 

And we do that through daily workouts, through mantras and meditations. Third training, little motivational post here and there. And just basically having our own little community out on the internet that way. We span across the globe. We, we don't have to be relegated to just one single firehouse. The world is our firehouse. 

In that case with the Patrion community. I check it out at join. Keep the promise.com. So you can be like one of these folks who get a shout out at the end of the podcast. So without further ado, special shout out, goes out to Nick from Greenwood, Indiana. Riley from sunset, Louisiana. And RJ from valley Springs, California. Thank you guys for joining this community. 

I hope. And I know that you are getting a ton of value from it. And thank you to you. My dear listener for taking the time to. Tune into the show and to hopefully get something new and something at a value that you can take back to your firehouse. Tune in, in a couple of weeks for another awesome episode until then be good. 

Be safe. I'll catch you later.